Chapter 32 wait

The carriage took him to No. 4004 on that street in the Northwest District.The clock hadn't struck nine in the morning; the man looked approvingly at the sycamores with mottled bark, the exposed soil on one side under each tree, the neat houses with small balconies, a nearby pharmacy, the faded paintwork of the paint and hardware store. Rhombus facade decoration.On the opposite sidewalk was the long wall of a hospital; the glass of some distant conservatories glistened with sunlight.The man thought that these things (disorganized and irrational as seen in a dream put together) would be unchanging, necessary, and gracious, if God allowed, in time to come.In the window of the pharmacy there is a porcelain shop name: Bresslauer.Jews are displacing Italians, who had supplanted native whites.It was as good as it was; that man would rather deal with people who were not of his own race.

The coachman helped him unload the trunk; a dazed or tired woman finally opened the door.The coachman gave him a coin from his seat, a Uruguayan copper that had been in his pocket since the night at the Hotel Merlot.The man gave the coachman forty cents and immediately thought: "I can't do anything to impress people. I have made two mistakes; paying a foreign currency and being noticed that I am very Take this error seriously." Leading the way by the woman, he passed through the foyer and the first patio.The room reserved for him was fortunately facing the second patio.There is an iron bed in the room, the craftsmen made the bed frame ornately, like the shape of grape vines and grape leaves; there is also a large pine wardrobe, a bedside table, a floor-standing bookcase, two mismatched chairs, one with Basin, pitcher, soap dish, a stand for a dark glass.On the wall was a map of the province of Buenos Aires and a cross; the wallpaper was carmine red, with a pattern of repeated large peacocks spreading their tails.The only door opens onto the patio.After moving the position of the chair, the suitcase can be put down.The lodger was satisfied; when the woman asked him what his address was, he answered Villari.He didn't say it as a secret challenge, or to alleviate a humiliation he didn't actually feel, but because it haunted him and it was impossible for him to think of another.He thought that impersonating the enemy's surname was a cunning trick, made up in the novel, of course he didn't have such an idea.

At first Mr. Villari stayed indoors; after a few weeks he went out only after dark.One night, he went to a movie theater three blocks from where he lived.He always sat in the last row; he always stood up and left the theater earlier than waiting for the end.He read the sad stories of the lower classes; such stories undoubtedly included mistakes, including images of his previous life; Villari did not pay attention to these, because it never occurred to him that art and reality could coincide.He makes a submissive effort to like the storyline; he wants to get ahead of the plot's intentions.Unlike someone who reads novels, he never sees himself as a character in a work of art.

He never had letters, not even advertisements sent to him, but he read a certain column of the paper with vague hopes.In the evening, he moved a chair to the door and drank his yerba mate seriously, his eyes fixed on the creeping plants on the wall of the house next door.The years of being alone let him know that most of the days in his memory are exactly the same, but there is no day, even in prison or hospital, without some unexpected things happening.Previously in the seclusion he could not help counting the days and hours, but this time it was different because the seclusion had no time limit—unless Alejandro Villari was published in the papers one morning. News of the dead.It was also possible that Villari was dead, and that life was like a dream.That possibility made him uneasy, because he couldn't tell whether the feeling it brought was relief or catastrophe; he told himself that possibility was absurd and dismissed it.In the distant past (it was not the length of time that made him feel distant, but two or three irrevocable events), he had longed for many things with a desperate love; and that strong desire attracted the hatred of men. In love with a woman, now I don't want something special: I just want it to last, not to end.The smell of yerba mate, the strong smell of smoke, the growing shadows on the patio floor.

There is an old wolfhound in this house.Villari made friends with it.He talked to the dogs in Spanish, Italian, and some country dialect that he remembered speaking as a child.Villari tried to keep his eyes on the present, without remembering the past or thinking about the future; the past was less meaningful to him than the future.He vaguely felt that the past was the substance of which time was made; therefore time quickly became past.Sometimes, his boredom is like a sense of happiness; at that time, his mental activities are not much more complicated than that of a dog. One night a sharp pain in his mouth made him tremble with terror.The dreadful miracle was repeated a few minutes later, and again towards dawn.The next day, Villari hired a cab to go to a dental clinic in the eleventh arrondissement.The doctor pulled out the big tooth for him.At that critical moment, he was neither timid nor calmer than others.

Another night, coming home from the movie theater, he felt pushed.Furious and yet secretly relieved, he turned to the offender and cursed viciously.The other party was startled and stammered an apology.It was a tall young man with dark hair, and there was a woman of the German type at his side; Villari, thinking twice about it that night, was sure he did not know those two people.But he squatted at home for four or five days before he dared to go out on the street. In the bookcase is a "Divine Comedy" commented on by Andrioli.With some curiosity and a strong sense of duty, Villari began to read the magnificent book; he read a song before supper, and then perused the notes in strict order.He did not think that the suffering in hell was impossible or excessive, and he did not think that Dante had sent him to the last level of hell, where Ugolino kept gnawing his teeth on Luqieri's neck.

The peacocks on the bright red wallpaper seemed to cause haunting nightmares, but Mr. Villari never dreamed of the eerie arbors densely populated with living birds.At dawn, he always had a dream with the same background but different details.Villari and two others broke into his room with pistols in hand, or attacked him when he came out of the movie theater, or all three became the stranger who pushed and fucked him, or waited for him sullenly in the patio, I met him but I didn't seem to know him.Towards the end of the dream, he took the pistol out of the nightstand drawer (he did keep a pistol in the drawer) and fired at the men.The gunshot woke him up, but it was always just a dream, in another dream the men attacked him again, in a third he had to kill them again.

One hazy morning in July, he was awakened by the presence of strangers (not their opening doors).In the dark room they were tall, their faces strangely blurred in the gloom (always much clearer in nightmares than they are now), staring, motionless, waiting patiently, as if the weight of the weapon in their hands had bent them In sight, Alejandro Villari and a stranger finally find him.He gestured them to wait, then rolled over against the wall, as if trying to fall asleep again.Did he do it to elicit pity from his killers, or because it was easier to bear a terrible event than to imagine it endlessly, to wait for it, or—perhaps most likely—to imagine that those killers were just dreams. The scene in the picture, as he had seen it many times in the same place and at the same time?

While he was in a trance like this, the gunfire obliterated him.